"What it must look and smell like when a movie brain vomits. Truly worthless."
-Variety

Sunday, May 07, 2017

Auteur Watch - Kirk Fraser

...dang! I'm even falling behind on this beloved feature of my little web log! Well, let's see. When you think documentary filmmakers... let's play the usual word association game. Documentary filmmakers. When you hear that word, you think an increasingly shorter and shorter list of the greats. You think Ken Burns, you think Michael Moore to an extent, the measles... I mean, Maysles... you think The Thin Blue Line. You tend to think the award-winning stuff. At least, someone of my generation. I know you've got stuff now like "Making a Murderer" or "Better Call Saul" these days. So, you tend to skip over the workaday documentarians whose work doesn't break through into the attention of the increasingly narrow national public consciousness. Someone like Jamaica-born Kirk Fraser.
And he's certainly not picking boring subjects, mind you. Fraser's first is called "The Life of Rayful Edmond," a documentary about a notorious cocaine dealer in the D.C. area. You can read the review of it here. Then he spent some time with Li'l Kim. Then it was "Against All Odds" (or Odd's, as suggested by the poster) about the Dallas Mavericks. A sequel would come later, but not before "Without Bias," and it is indeed about someone named Bias. Hard to pass up a good name pun for the title, I know. The ESPN Network would later use it for their 30 for 30 series... I still don't know what that means.
..hmm! Fraser seems to be sticking to either sports or hip hop subjects! Well, seems to be working for him. Might as well stick with what works. If you're having a good time, and you like what you do for a living, and you make a slight profit in the process, you're indeed one of life's lucky ones.